Now almost 70, Carol Applegate has survived breast cancer for 31 years. That’s the message she wants to get to other women, particularly younger ones.

“When I had the operation, hearing that there were women who had had mastectomies several years earlier — even 10, 20, 30 years — that got me through it,” she said.

Applegate had a few famous women to serve as examples. In October of 1974, breast cancer awareness received a boost from an unexpected corner when First Lady Betty Ford had her much-publicized mastectomy. The news prompted a surge across the country of women seeking mammograms, including Happy Rockefeller, wife of then- vice president-designate Nelson Rockefeller. Two weeks after Ford, Rockefeller underwent the same operation. The surgeries gave both women — and possibly many more — a new lease on life. Ford died this past July at age 93; Rockefeller is 85. It was information Applegate welcomed.

“I had had my lump for quite some time. The doctor kept telling me it was probably nothing, it wasn’t in the cards,” she said. “When you go to the doctor, you go hoping to be told nothing is wrong. I went to the doctor for a year. I wanted to hear it was OK.”

Applegate had none of the traditional risk factors such as family history, smoking, drinking, drugs, overweight or a drastic change in weight. Finally her doctor told her if she was still worried in six months, he would schedule the surgery “so I could relax.”

“I went home and started crying when I told my husband, David. He said ‘Oh, no, you’re not waiting. You’re having it done now if this is what you’re going to be like for the next six months.’ He probably saved my life,” Applegate said.

She made arrangements with her doctor and went in for a biopsy. That evening after the operation, a doctor came in and poked and prodded various limbs and parts. When she asked what that was all about, the response was “We’ll know better in the morning.”

“Know better about what?” Applegate thought.

The next morning she got dressed and awaited David who was to pick her up and take her home. When time passed and he did not arrive, she borrowed a dime from her roommate, not having brought any money for a simple, overnight stay.

“I went to the waiting room to make a phone call and as I raised my hand to put the dime in the phone, I looked and there was my husband sitting on the couch, crying,” she said. “I can still feel the chills now.”

Together they made arrangements for her surgery and she went in for a 10-day stay. The only people who knew other than the medical people were her husband and her mother, whom she asked not to tell her father, “but I found out later that she did. He knew all along. When I had it, I had a 7-year-old daughter. I never at the moment told her but as I became more comfortable with it, I did.”

During her hospital stay, Applegate said she was treated very well with people trying to make her comfortable and happy. Her primary care doctor came in and ate lunch with her every day. Since her room was on the ground floor, David brought their daughter to the window so they could talk.

“We told her the doctors said I needed a rest,” she said. “The hospital was on the way to school. I would save my cookies from lunch and give to some of the children who walked by after school and stopped to talk. They’d ask me why I was in the hospital because I didn’t look sick. When I told them the same thing, one little boy said, ‘Well, if you need a rest, you could come to my house.’”

There were also visitors who shared their breast cancer experience with Applegate.

“In the hospital I was in, they had oncologic social workers. A woman who had breast cancer came in to talk to me from some group and she was maybe my age now, trying to reassure me,” Applegate said. “I had no more in common with her than fly to the moon. That’s when I knew young women needed young women to talk to.”

The surgery removed her left breast. Only lumpectomies were being done in Europe at the time, she said, but that wouldn’t have been an option for her, anyway.

“I had tumors in all four quadrants. Most of us want to deny it and think the worst thing is getting a breast removed,” she said. “I was embarrassed to think that people would then look at you and think of you as disfigured. My biggest concern was the disfigurement. I wasn’t dealing with reality then. I wasn’t thinking about death.”

The next year when a number of lumps appeared in her other breast, she had the tissue removed.

“I think what I feel is all women have to do is go after breast cancer. Instead of being afraid of it, be vigilant for it,” Applegate said. “And with the reconstruction available these days, you no longer have to be disfigured.

“My biggest goal is to help women. I just want them to be aggressive in looking for breast cancer. That’s the only way you’re going to survive it,” she said. “Don’t just be happy with the doctor saying it is OK. If you’re not happy, make him take it out.”

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